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Henry Gassaway Davis An Old Fashioned Biography by Thomas Richard Ross 1994 DJ
Henry Gassaway Davis An Old Fashioned Biography by Thomas Richard Ross 1994 DJ
Hard Cover with Dust Jacket
342 Pages
Henry Gassaway Davis, although largely forgotten today, was one of the more prominent and significant secondary political and business leaders of the country a century ago, especially from 1875 to 1905. A descendant of landed gentry in colonial Maryland, he endured hard times as a youth and had no formal schooling beyond the elementary grades.
Starting work as a farmhand, young Davis was subsequently employed as a brakeman, conductor, and station agent for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad before he began his business and political career just prior to the Civil War. As a railroader, he noted the potential wealth of the forests and coal lands in what was to become the state of West Virginia. Thus, he invested his profits and his wife's inheritance in the acquisition of thousands of acres of undeveloped land, often for less than a dollar per acre. Then he built two railroad systems to open north-central West Virginia to the markets of the East and North.
Early realizing the relationship of political power to business development, Davis successfully sought election to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1865, when the new state was only two years old. After service there and in the state Senate, he was elected to the United States Senate in 1871. A conservative Democrat, he opposed the Radical Republican program of Reconstruction of the South and denounced the waste and corruption of the Grant era. He served twelve years in the Senate and became chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, a post no other West Virginian would hold until Robert C. Byrd acquired it more than a century later. Davis was a predominant leader of the West Virginia Democratic party for more than three decades. He attended nine National Conventions and in 1904, at the age of eighty-one, he was nominated for vice-president of the United States.
Preface ix
CHAPTER 1
In the Beginning 1
CHAPTER II
Formative Years: 1823-1842 11
CHAPTER III
Working for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad:
1842-1858 19
CHAPTER IV
Henry Davis in the Civil War Era: 1858-1866 27
CHAPTER V
West Virginia Legislator: 1866-1870 34
CHAPTER VI
West Virginia's First Democratic United States
Senator: 1871-1877 63
CHAPTER VII
The Second Senate Term: 1877-1883 97
CHAPTER VIII
Realization of a Dream-Building the West Virginia
Central and Pittsburg Railroad: 1883-1889 139
CHAPTER IX
Friends in the White House: 1885-1893 166
CHAPTER X
New Homes and New Ventures in Business
and Politics: 1893-1900 205
CHAPTER XI
The Climax of a Long Career: 1901-1905 259
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